{"id":314724,"date":"2025-11-28T17:28:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T17:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/314724\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T17:28:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T17:28:08","slug":"nba-cup-gets-you-ready-for-playoff-pressure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/314724\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA Cup gets you ready for playoff pressure"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>            <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-126634\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/browntowns1128.jpg\" alt=\"Mike Brown, Karl-Anthony Towns, NBA\" width=\"696\" height=\"390\"  \/>Getty<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"69\" data-end=\"184\">The Knicks can clinch their NBA Cup group on Friday night, and they\u2019re treating it like something that matters.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"186\" data-end=\"378\">Beat Milwaukee and New York finishes on top of its bracket, becoming the only team to reach the knockout round in all three years of the tournament.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"186\" data-end=\"378\">Head coach Mike Brown isn\u2019t downplaying it.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"380\" data-end=\"632\">\u201cWe talk about it,\u201d Brown told reporters, via <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2025\/11\/27\/sports\/knicks-josh-hart-has-vision-to-enhance-future-nba-cups\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Stefan Bondy of the New York Post<\/a>. \u201cPressure is a privilege. If you\u2019re in a situation where there is pressure, you\u2019re doing pretty good.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"380\" data-end=\"632\">\u201cIt gets you ready for the postseason, in my opinion, so I bring it up to our guys.\u201d<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"634\" data-end=\"729\">Translation: the Knicks are embracing it. Treating it like a dress rehearsal for April and May.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"731\" data-end=\"881\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/h\/hartjo01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=hoopswire.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-11-28_bbr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Josh Hart<\/a> even floated an idea to raise the stakes. He thinks the NBA Cup champ should get a half-win in the regular-season standings as a tiebreaker.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"883\" data-end=\"1013\">Right now, the title game doesn\u2019t count in the standings at all. Just prize money.<br data-start=\"965\" data-end=\"968\"\/>\u201cFor me, that\u2019ll be watch money,\u201d Hart joked.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"1015\" data-end=\"1086\" data-is-last-node=\"\" data-is-only-node=\"\">New York gets Milwaukee on Friday. One more win and the Knicks move on.<\/p>\n<p>Looking for the latest NBA Insider News &amp; Rumors?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Be sure to follow <a style=\"color: #ff6a14;\" href=\"https:\/\/hoopswire.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Hoops Wire<\/a> on <a style=\"color: #ff6a14;\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/wirehoops\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">TWITTER<\/a>\u00a0and <a style=\"color: #ff6a14;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/hoopswire\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">FACEBOOK<\/a>\u00a0for breaking NBA News and Rumors for all 30 teams!<\/p>\n<p>        <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Getty The Knicks can clinch their NBA Cup group on Friday night, and they\u2019re treating it like something&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,87780,15566,590,85],"class_list":["post-314724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-josh-hart","tag-mike-brown","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}